Making of man : a study in evolution / by Sir Oliver Lodge.

  • Oliver Lodge
Date:
1924
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Making of man : a study in evolution / by Sir Oliver Lodge. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    19/194 (page 15)
    Human Powers Moreover, we seem to have developed a power of genuine creation, that is to say, of bringing things into existence, such as Poems, and Music, and works of Art gener¬ ally, which would not otherwise have existed; and which are a real contribution, though perhaps only a small one, to the sum of things. But in spite of all our discoveries, and all our achievements or creations, we really know and have done very little. And what we have known and done has been achieved by the genius of the few : the bulk of man¬ kind show evident signs of imperfection and immaturity. For the most part we seem content to live in the midst of quite un¬ necessary ugliness, and to spend our time in what we can hardly regard otherwise than as a sort of futility. Unless mankind is to develop into something far higher and altogether better than anything attained in the present stage of civilisation, the long course of preparation, the hundreds of millions of years during which this planet has been growing habitable, does not seem worth while. Unless the Universe too is meaningless and futile—which surely is a blasphemous supposition,—the outcome of